Qualla: Rathcroghan https://qualla.com/rathcroghan en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:12 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/d/4/rathcroghan-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Rathcroghan https://qualla.com/rathcroghan Rathcroghan: Introduction https://qualla.com/rathcroghan/ Photo credit Joseph Christian Leyendecker (1874 - 1951), Public domain. From the air it looks like ordinary Connacht pasture. From the ground, almost as ordinary - a few low grassy mounds, some ancient field banks, a deep notched hollow at the edge of a road. But underneath the soil here, scattered across six square kilometres of plain near the village of Tulsk in County Roscommon, lie more than 240 archaeological sites - sixty of them protected national monuments - representing six thousand years of continuous human activity. National Geographic has called Rathcroghan possibly Europe's largest unexcavated royal complex. Irish tradition calls it Cruachan, the capital of the ancient Connachta. The medieval Christian writers called it the Gate to Hell. To the storytellers of the Ulster Cycle, this was the seat of Queen Maeve - and the place where the war for the Brown Bull of Cooley began.

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Image: Joseph Christian Leyendecker (1874 - 1951) | Public domain

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/d/4/rathcroghan-wp/gcd4-rathcroghan-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Rathcroghan: The Plain of Connacht https://qualla.com/rathcroghan/ Photo credit Sawyer777, CC BY-SA 4.0. Standing on top of Rathcroghan Mound, the focal point of the complex, you see almost nothing dramatic - just the slow roll of grazing country in every direction, broken here and there by hedgerows and the smudges of small towns. That flatness is the point. This is Mag nAi, the gr...

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Image: Sawyer777 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/d/4/rathcroghan-wp/gcd4-rathcroghan-the-plain-of-connacht.mp3 0:06 2 full Rathcroghan: Queen Maeve's Country https://qualla.com/rathcroghan/ Photo credit Kieran Campbell, CC BY-SA 2.0. Cruachan is the home of one of the most vividly drawn characters in Irish literature. Medb - Queen Maeve in English - rules Connacht here in the Ulster Cycle, married to King Ailill mac Mata, and it is from these halls that the great cattle-raid of the Tain Bo Cuailnge begins. Th...

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Image: Kieran Campbell | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/d/4/rathcroghan-wp/gcd4-rathcroghan-queen-maeves-country.mp3 0:06 3 full Rathcroghan: Oweynagat: The Cave of the Cats https://qualla.com/rathcroghan/ Photo credit Sawyer777, CC BY-SA 4.0. At the edge of the complex, beside the road, an unassuming hawthorn marks the entrance to Oweynagat - Uaimh na gCat, the Cave of the Cats. A narrow stone-lintelled passage drops underground into a natural limestone cave that runs back about thirty-seven metres beneath the field. ...

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Image: Sawyer777 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/d/4/rathcroghan-wp/gcd4-rathcroghan-oweynagat-the-cave-of-the-cats.mp3 0:06 4 full Rathcroghan: The Mound, the Mucklaghs, and Dathi's Stone https://qualla.com/rathcroghan/ Photo credit Sawyer777, CC BY-SA 4.0. The complex repays slow walking. Rathmore, the 'Big Fort,' is a forty-metre convex mound that the geophysics shows is full of hearths and pits - possibly an Iron Age communal hall, the kind of timber building where high feasts were held. Reilig na Ri, the 'Burial Place of the Kin...

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Image: Sawyer777 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/d/4/rathcroghan-wp/gcd4-rathcroghan-the-mound-the-mucklaghs-and-dathis-stone.mp3 0:06 5 full